Shenzhou-10 docks with space station, closing the gap between China and NASA

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Two days ago, China’s Shenzhou-10 space mission took flight from the Jiuquan launch center in the Gobi desert. The mission’s primary payload was its three astronauts (“taikonauts”), who were bound for the Tiangong-1 space station to perform tests, and to be the last inhabitants of China’s first foray into semi-permanent space stations. As with early NASA missions, their primary goal was simply to go up and come down, testing the station’s docking mechanisms and their still-new techniques in manned spaceflight. (We are still awaiting photos from the event; the photo above is from the Shenzhou-7 space-walk.) Powered by China’s Long March 2F rocket, the current workhorse of its manned spaceflight program, it took just two days to reach the station.

Today the capsule docked successfully with Tiangong-1, and since it is the last planned to do so, it also marked the completion of both its own mission and that of the station. This mission was originally scheduled for late 2012, but an adjustment to the station’s quickly decaying orbit extended that launch window by almost a year. Shenzhou-10 has been a major media event in China, with significant attention going to the China’s second-ever female spacefarer, Wang Yaping. Yaping is the chief researcher on the mission and will remotely teach a physics lesson to students back on Earth.

A diagram illustrating the Shenzhou spacecraft and the Tiangong-1 space station [Image credit: BBC]

This is just China’s fifth manned mission to space, and its longest by two days. It is also its most ambitious technological achievement, featuring an automatic docking procedure that reportedly went off without a hitch. Though Shenzhou-9 already carried astronauts to the station in June of last year, its docking was controlled remotely from a ground station. While aboard Tiangong-1, the crew of Shenzhou-10 will practice manual docking and collect data for use in designing the next in the three planned Tiangong outposts.

The station is no permanent residence, but rather a proof of concept for many of the technologies such a station require. Docking, life support, and other intrinsic features of a space station are present, but the crew will be jammed into a space just 10.5 meters long and 4.5 wide; when sleeping, two will inhabit the station, while a third will have to remain in the capsule. China wants to begin construction of a permanent station by the end of the decade, and if its lightning-quick progress so far is any indication, China might well be able to achieve that goal.

On June 11, 2013, the Chinese Long March 2F rocket carried Shenzhou-10 into orbit.

There is certainly no lack of enthusiasm in the Chinese space agency, a sort of optimism not seen at NASA in some time. Perhaps that’s the be expected, since China’s economic fortunes have been less disheartening than America’s, of late; looking back to the golden age of the North American space effort, there are parallels in terms of the public’s willingness to believe in their unlimited potential. Though it might seem absurd from an agency that only put a man in space in 2003, there is a genuine belief they they can put a man on Mars — and perhaps even beat NASA to the punch.

Such a threat might just be necessary to galvanize the American public behind such huge efforts as a manned mission to Mars. If the possible benefits of the mission itself aren’t enough, China’s threat to cross the finish line first might just be. NASA’s lead in space is still great indeed, but it is shrinking, and the Chinese have the benefit of learning from NASA’s decades of hard work. Economic tides have kept Russia from being a real competitor in recent times; in the future, it may be taikonauts, not cosmonauts, who engage our competitive streak, and truly challenge us to excel.

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